Death in Tokyo
by WinchesterNimrod
Summary: Ryuk says something along the lines of: Do whatever you like! "I see," Harry considers this for a long, long while. "Yes, I think I shall." And vanishes with a Pop. [MOD Harry]
1. Chapter 1

_A plot bunny that has been hopping around for about a year. I've been too terrified to write it because Light and L are such a difficult characters to portray. I hope I do them justice. _

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In the Kanto region of Tokyo Japan, seated on a swing in a local park was a figure. This figure was invisible to those handful of children around him, complaining as they are led home by parents for the end of the day. A young girl passes the man, who stares at her unwaveringly. Reaching out to brush back a loose curl. She shivers, thinks nothing of it.

In five minutes she will cross the street with her mother and get run over by a truck. The future she envisions of being a dancer left unfulfilled. Five minutes pass, she lives. Because around the corner seated at his desk in his bedroom. Yagami Light interfered.

This figure, Harry Potter and Master of Death, rests his chin on a fist. Watching the sunset die behind trees and houses. He was dressed in his thin black silken suit, silver Hallows pendant pinned to his blazer's collar as a sign of status to reapers in the area.

A streetlight a yard behind blinks on as night time fast approaches. Shadowing the swing set.

His shadow was noticeably absent.

Wings beat above him, Harry doesn't look up.

"Master," Ryuk lands opposite, grin grotesque. "How goes your, heh, travels?"

"Rome was nice," Harry said, gaze idle and profoundly irked. "But after living as long as I have, it was nothing haven't seen before. Greed, murder, sex, politics, affairs, within a day I wondered why everyone was so surprised at their eventual demise."

"Yes," Ryuk agrees for the sake of keeping his head on his shoulders. After three centuries of being in Head of Power, Harry had eventually stopped thinking twice before acting out on his anger and committing needlessly hideous violence. There is only one thing Reapers fear more than life, and that is death. It only took a critical hit to Reaper population for them to wake up and adopt grovelling as their second primary function, first being sass. "Humanity does like playing victim when their consequences finally come running."

Harry snorts, "I've felt the severe increase in souls entering the Veil." Veil being the passageway to Judgement's abode. Where their souls will be weighed to see if they deserve Heaven, Hell or reincarnation. "Does this have to do with your new past time, Ryuk?"

If Ryuk had the physical means, he would be sweating. "Heh."

Harry's gaze is unflickering. "I see. You know, there is also a dramatic surge of life as well. We're loosing our clientele."

Ryuk hadn't known Harry started caring about such things again. "I apologise, Master," Harry didn't look angry, so he wasn't about to start worrying about decapitation. "I was bored, you see – "

"I know all about boredom, Ryuk. Don't go feeling special," Harry kicks out his long legs, surging to his feet in a lift of air. Black slippers untouched by the dirt ground, he pulls himself to his full height. Almost reaching Ryuk's chin.

Souls were the most powerful entities in all dimensions and universes and Harry being the Master of death held full responsibilities of handling them. His growth spurt was the smallest on the list of anatomical changes.

"I'm currently grappling with the displeasure of whether or not I should _care_ about this," Harry explains, materializing the broad-bladed sword of Gryffindor in his hand. Ryuk can't contain his flinch when the tip lands in-between his eyes. "Your little fun has stripped the globe of thousands of potential souls. Power that keeps me afloat in this ludicrous job of mine. Of course," he sighs, "you can't even begin to appreciate the situation you've put me in. You self-proclaimed Death Gods are ridiculous. Satisfy boredom by any means, you lot. You're all so incapable, sometimes I feel as though we're speaking different languages to each other."

Every decade or so I have to face some half-cocked wizard, witch or muggle wanting to take my job. Always powered up and stupid. Leading to some very unpleasant situations where they're entirely possessed by greed and nearly destroy a continent. Now, being the reasonable fellow that I am I stop that from occurring despite all the souls I could gain. I'm not a fan of overeating."

He presses the tip of his sword against Ryuk's skin. Black blood resembling the consistency of tar trickles down and beads into the holes of his nose.

"However," Harry continues drily, "at this current stage of time I feel no threat towards being killed by some mere mortal. Support me with your opinion, Ryuk. Should I let Yagami Light keep on killing or should I be the Master of Death and damned well do my job at keeping balance in the spirit world."

Not quite grasping what Harry wanted exactly – not his fault, nobody ever does - Ryuk says something along the lines of: "Do whatever you like!"

"I see," Harry considers this for a long, long while. "Yes, I think I shall." And without another spoken word, he dematerialises the sword, lets his hand fall back into his pocket and turns on his heel. Vanishing with a pop.

It was all so confusing, Ryuk stands there gawping. Hearing the thunder clouds roll in and rain begin its decent.

.

Two eyes bore into Light's when he turns around at the sound of a _pop_. The depths of their emerald green, glowing in toxicity peers right into him, through him, as though Light had fallen on his knees in breathless agony and bared his soul to the man.

_The man_, Light retains a shudder. He was ghoulish. Features sharp with skin so pale it looked like he had died and dressed for his own funeral. He tilts his head to the side, leaning in so close Light should be able to feel his breath. He can't.

Light knows who this is.

A God of Death, the _thing_ he had been waiting for.

The God smiles, eyes flashing. "Yagami Light," he says and Light envies the power it carries. The way he is able to make him feel small and _human_. "You have something of mine, mind explaining your intentions are with it?"

Eerily calm Light rocks up off his chair to face the Death God head on. The God tracks him with his eyes, seeming to study every movement and weighing them.

"So this Death Note is yours, eh?" he says, speaking carefully. Notebook heavy, he picks it up and flips open the page to show the God his actions. Prepared for judgement. The man takes it, eyebrow arched.

"Nice kill count," he snaps the book shut, "Should this impress me?"

Light smiles, "I suppose being a God, human conventions fly over your head. That kill count as you so gently put it is me conquering the evil that's plagued my society for too long."

"Evil?"

"Murderers, rapists, paedophiles," Light explains impatiently. "The sort who jeer at people's weaknesses. All of them, they've gotten comfortable. Shielded behind this broken thing my father calls the justice system," he can't help but snort.

Looking away to scowl back at his memories. Of the men that almost raped that woman, the boys bullying a kid, the people he's seen walking to school exacting brutality to those around them. Not fearing the consequences because who's gonna do anything in a society that's too afraid of stepping up against these assholes?

Light found it near overwhelmingly irritating. How pathetic his society has fallen.

An itch in the world he can't help but scratch at.

"These days anybody can get away with anything given lack of evidence, extenuating circumstances or being cooperative. I hear it all the time. In the news, from friends at school, everywhere. Injustice. I'm sick of it."

"Your purpose, putting it plainly," the God settles back on the edge of his bed. Beginning to look intrigued. Light bites down the eager smile. "Is to play Judgement on society in an attempt to," he rolls a hand, "fix it."

"Not attempt," Light says, "I _will_ fix it."

The man gives a laugh with the crack of thunder outside. "Such a childish dream, so stupid and ignorant at how temporary this will be," he stops laughing, "_Extraordinary_."

Light calms himself, "I'm setting out to make a point. Nobody in this world is held accountable for their crimes, not really. But I'll change that. Evil," he snarls, "this whole damn _disease_ that's been rotting my world is getting pulled down one by one – by me. People have seemed to have forgotten what right and wrong is," stepping forwards he meets the God's bright eyes. Determined. "You chose me to use this Death Note. So I'll become_," a God_, he couldn't say. Not in front of an actual one, "their new leader."

He laughs again, uncaring to how Light's chest tightens in tempered frustration, "Brilliant. You remind me of someone I once knew. A stupid little man with dreams larger than himself and because of that, I killed him."

Light takes a breath, stilling himself. He's said is peace, explained his purpose, now it's time to face the facts. "Is that why you're here? To kill me because I dream big?"

The God aims his piercing eyes at him again, "You interest me. Rare. I don't much care for watching people's lives play out, everything's all too repetitive and similar. Predictable you lot are," he tells Light. "Even now I can see this whole shebang you have going on is going to blow up in your face. What you're setting out to do here is only temporary, you must understand. You seem to be an intelligent little cretin, so surely you can comprehend how your actions will shape future criminals actions. You're not conquering them you're educating them in ways to be smarter and avoid the media."

"When that day comes and they begin to hide from me," Light narrows his eyes in a tight smile, "I'll already be ten steps ahead. I'm already beginning to have followers. Once my empire rises and I have people in the government, in places I can't reach myself, I'll hunt them down."

"Bit fragile of a system you have there."

"It's in the works," Light swivels his chair around so he could sit facing the God. Surprised at how casual it felt. "Have I earned your permission to stay alive?"

"Cut down the numbers a bit," the God says, "and I won't kill you. I'm curious to see how all this plays out."

Though a bit unhappy, Light agrees.

"Oh and, I didn't choose you to have the Death Note," he says. Standing up to examine his bookshelf. Extremely mundane.

"What?"

"Everything that has happened up until now is because one of my Death God's dropped the Notebook I had given him. He was bored and was searching for a means to entertain himself," at Light's blank stare he explains. "Ryuk wasn't one of my creations. He's apart of my predecessor's batch. Imbecilic bunch. The embarrassment of Reaper society."

"What are you, exactly?" Light asks. Things not starting to add up.

"Harry James Potter," he says, switching to a foreign accent and bowing with the grace of Royalty ."Master of Death. Owner of all Death Notes, Souls, the Undead, and Reapers."

"Master of Death," Light repeats. Growing profoundly interested. All boredom he had felt for the past seventeen years of his life eviscerated before his very eyes.

Harry grins, all teeth. "Hello."

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_Please review :D_


	2. Chapter 2

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The most interesting thing about Yagami Light, is that his entire life was a lie from start to finish.

"You think so?" Light asks.

Black pointed slippers sitting respectfully next to Light's own on the floor. The Master of Death lolls on his bed; long, thin legs crossed over one another and back pressed against the wall. Harry absently thumbed through one of Light's history textbooks while he spoke.

"I know so," Harry said. Screwing up his eyes to momentarily glance out at the pouring rain through Light's balcony glass door.

As he does, he tells the story of Light's birth and the complications that came along with it. His first breath, thought, word – _lie_ – steps. Slow decent into boredom and isolation. A genius who could not comprehend the world around him – or rather, he understood too well and could not apprehend why it turned out the way it has.

In silent fascination, Light listens. Finding himself to be unsurprised at the Master of Death's length of knowledge. Simply considering.

Yagami Light, a candied shell of a human being. Exhausted in the performance of living while the world around rots from control, had found Death.

He had found a God, and desired to become its better.

"You haven't told me the end," he says when Harry suddenly stops. "Is my ending so dull that you can't bother telling me?" he dares.

Outside rainwater hits the glass door in soft pats.

_Pat-pat-pat_

The deity gives a polite, but apathetic smile. "Rushing to the last page of a book spoils the surprise," he says. "The anticipation, wonder and excitement you could have experienced is is all gone the moment you read it. Actions become predictable. Characters are left empty. You begin to skip paragraphs, pages, chapters until you begin where you had started. The end."

_Pat-pat-pat_

"And then you figure, _oh_ _gosh_, I just wasted so much time. I wish I never read it. The ultimate climax you see people enjoy is a dismal. As the Master of Death I can't help but look whenever I meet someone," Harry says. "Endings I know too much of, motivations and desires are something I'm out of touch with. So, tell me. _Why_ would you risk such profound boredom for some morbid sense of curiosity?"

Green eyes pin him, and Light knows instantly he's been seen through.

_Pat-pat-pat_

"Ah _ha_," Harry sat motionless. "You think that by knowing, you can prevent it. _Funny._ You can't. I could flick you on the forehead right now and your head would come flying off your shoulders."

Light calmly deliberates, "Do I take that I fail?"

"Take it, and live with uncertainty," Harry says. "As any human naturally does after visiting a psychic and getting their fortune told."

Something didn't add up to Light. "So, if it's as boring as you say it is why stick around for an empty climax? Why ask about my intentions with the notebook when you already know them?"

He was getting a bad feeling about this. It doesn't make sense.

To Harry, it perfectly did.

And he took what Light asked with indignation. As though he had just thrown salt onto an open wound, "What… a… _rude_ suggestion that I know what your intentions are."

Light shrugs, "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck..."

"To know an end and understand what drove you to get there are two entirely separate things." Explains Harry. "One of which my sight is blocked by."

Closing his eyes, Harry rolls his head back with a sigh. Dark, curly hair masking half his face.

_Pat-pat-pat_

"Can't a _bored_, out of touch fellow search for understanding in what drives humanity to their deaths?" he asks. Listless. Exhausted. "I watched Rome fall in twenty four different universes and every single time they acted surprised. Imbeciles! So many senseless endings. I can't fathom what they were thinking, those cooky bastards."

In a peculiar sort of way, Light could sympathise. How the world has tuned into a utopia for cockroaches was beyond him.

Death abruptly chuckles. Sending a cold, feverish shiver burst inside Light's chest like an infection.

"I'll tell you a secret, Yagami Light," he said. "Before meeting you I had wondered whether or not I should _care_ about killing you. You were disorienting the Veil and strings of Fate by the immense amount of bodies you were dropping. But then I saw your death and had to wonder," Harry pauses. Shaking his head. "What on _earth_ were you thinking, a man who appeared to be two steps ahead, the world at his fingertips, deceptive, crafty, intelligent - to end like bloody_..._"

Despite not getting an answer, Light wanted to laugh.

The Master of Death seemed to be on a bit of soul searching.

"What – "

"I always think," Harry's eyes abruptly snap open to the ceiling. Brilliant green flashing behind bangs. Light silences at unstable switch of temperament.

_Pat-pat-pat_

"That the sort of people who ask too many questions make absolute dreadful company. People like that don't respect other's privacy. They go snooping and flirting. Always questioning business they have no right of council to. It's a most immodest habit that I hope…" he looks away, seeming to interrupt himself in apparent frustration. As though somebody had just jumped out and screamed.

Strangely, he bursts into a short, mad giggle before silencing and staring at him.

Light contains his flinch at those endless pits of knowledge.

"No, really. I hope for your own head of health that you quit. To inadvertently decapitate you would be such a - while a momentarily _thrilling_ twist of fate, unfortunate in the long run. I'd love for things to have meaning again."

Taking a hint, Light ends the single most enthralling and bewildering conversation he's ever had and returns to his studies. Implementing the insinuation of decapitation and short tempers to memory.

_Pat-pat-pat_

"If it's not too much trouble," he says after a handful of minutes. Tone carefully polite. "My family might hear you or see you, so if you insist on sticking around please stay hidden – "

"Don't bother," said Harry. "Currently, I'm only seen by you and separate supernatural entities in the area. I can wish to be seen if I want to but I'm not overly fond of screeching mothers. For some reason, my appearance startles people."

Questions tempered for now, Light simply says, "To be fair, you're not easy on the eyes. To us mortals you really _do_ look like what you are." Death Himself.

"Tell me, putatively speaking if I wanted to be seen without such volatile reactions, what should I adjust?"

Light doesn't ask about his apparent metamorphosis, and said: "Look more familiar."

"H'm…I see."

.

Harry gives little interest in Light's studies, and quietly drifts off to search the rest of his house. Fazing through the bedroom wall, he enters a hallway and strolls down the staircase to where he could hear voices coming from.

In the kitchen, Yagami Sachiko, mother of Japans' ruthless serial killer, was busy cooking dinner for everyone. Apron on and happily singing a trot song under her breath. Harry comes up behind her to the stove. Leans over her shoulder and smells the stew simmering. Rich, creamed stock and beef swelters up into his nostrils and Harry is taken back to the Weasleys.

Sachiko shivers, head swinging around and Harry inclines backwards to avoid the unpleasantness of someone alive entering his body.

He watches her for a few more seconds before retiring into the communal room where Sayu, youngest of the Yagami family, was watching a TV drama. Sitting cross-legged on the couch and hugging a pillow in her lap.

Siting besides her, weight leaving no dip on the couch, he studies what was playing on TV. A handsome Japanese man with blonde-dyed hair was acting out an incredibly inaccurate magic scene.

He gets a spontaneous urge to rip the man's head off in pure offence.

"Ha," Harry huffs, tilting his head when there was a close up on him. "…H'm."

Conjuring a circular mirror that floats mid-air, he morphs his prominent European features into one that resembles the man. Satisfied, he stands and appairates besides Light's desk. Giving him a jump.

"I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't…" the boy stares long and hard at him. "You look a bit familiar."

Satisfaction of a job well done wears off instantly.

"Hideki Ryuuga, well," Light half-smirks, "I guess if you were to base your appearance off of anybody, Japans' top ranked idol would be the way to do it. You look more approachable."

"Idol," Harry repeats. Cobwebbed memories of his children and others calling him that. For his sacrifices in the war. The repeated dying. "Funny that, I don't recall him kicking it."

"Oo-_kay_."

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	3. Chapter 3

I hope everybody is staying as safe as they possibly can during these trying times. Protect yourself and others my lovelies.

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From the corner of his eye, Light watched as one of many talon shaped fingernails graze past his workbook. Bone pushing in and lazily peeling back the membrane of wood on his desk. The loose shaving curls up and circles once, twice, before going limp.

Around him, the classroom was filled with nominal sounds of scratching pens on paper, hands on clock tick tick ticking away, and lethargic sighs and groans.

Nobody solely but Light could hear the deep and reverberant humming coming from the God of Death.

If he focused hard enough, Light could make out muttered words here and there. Mixtures of language some he could pinpoint, others he couldn't.

He asks Harry what he was humming at the end of P.E after volunteering to pack away the basketballs.

Harry snoops around the shed containing all sorts of physical education equipment. Smiling a taut smile at a CPR dummy.

"Just a bit of everything," he answers. "This is very wrong," having picked up the dummy by its silicone pink shoulders, he cocks his head to one side.

"Of course it is," Light found very early on in the week the Death God has stayed with him, that agreeing passed time much quicker than disagreeing.

"This contraption is intended to resemble a human," he tossed it up and down, turning to Light. Incensed, "why, this is positively inaccurate!"

Light went to…. _what_ he doesn't exactly know, but whatever the words might have been die in his throat.

"Much better!"

Crimson blood drops to the floor in one huge wave. Drenching Harry's velvet slippers and pale ankles. Liver, intestinal track and all sorts of bodily organs splatter and slip over one another. Now Light isn't majoring in biology, but he's pretty certain pink squishy bits aren't supposed to pour out like a burst fishing net.

It quickly occurs to Light that the man severed from waist down was still alive. _Not for much longer_, he internally corrects. Mouth pulling into a grimace.

The unknown, middle-aged man gasping in a blathering stupor stares up at the grinning God. Trying to formulate some sort of words, likely a plea. A question as to why, or what.

"Just who is this?" He asks. Watching the man's neck give in and slump.

As always, Harry doesn't answer straight away (enjoying silence more comfortably and more languidly Light had initially thought possible). Instead, with disturbing care, he crouches down to place the corpse next to the pile of organs. Of which digs a a hand into. Picking up an intestinal track and studying it as though the entire concept of the body system was foreign. Maybe it was.

Light found the entire scene to resemble a kid examining their earnings of candy on Halloween night.

"Some lad in your notebook," he stretches the intestine like play doh, "He's supposed to die in, oh, say the next quarter hour."

Light is very much aware of the blood pooling out from the corpse by now - body not yet set into rigour mortis - and tiptoes around it to get a better look at the man's frozen profile.

It takes a handful of seconds.

"Dante Aldente."

A pedophile recently released after three years in jail. Too light a sentence if you ask the good people of the world.

This seemed more appropriate an ending.

"Bazinga," Harry lolled to a stand, hands decorated in red as though he had just finger painted a Jackson pollock painting. Admiring his work, he declares. "Much better. Anatomically correct and life-like."

"The Dummy is supposed to help us learn CPR," Light breaks the news non-so gently. "Not anatomy."

"…_CPR_?" Harry whispers furiously.

_Yes_, Light thinks. Mentioning a life saving technique to the God of Death was as ironic as it could get.

"Please, if you wouldn't mind…" he gestures to the scene resembling a B-Horror film.

With a click of Death's tongue and snap of fingers, the dummy was back and Light didn't have to worry about burying a body in his school's decorative garden.

.

As a general rule, Harry doesn't kill people.

Not the ones that had some life left ticking in them. Despite popular belief, there are rules to the universe one must follow to keep order.

People that didn't adhere to them and lived in a lifeless void of novelty nicknamed 'miracle', 'anomaly', or 'paperwork' as Reapers liked to call it, were free pickings.

And as another general rule, in these trying times of Light sprouting more of these miracles, Harry had a bunch of overworked Reapers doing their earnest to enforce order to sanity.

Harry was watching another episode of Sayu's drama when a skeletal figure in a tattered, hooded cloak materialised through the tv set.

"Pardon the interruption, your Dreadfulness."

"Ah, my dear Gopher," Harry said with a welcoming smile that sent spiders jittering down its vertebrae, "I am happy to see you. Doing well, are we?"

"Horribly, my Dreadfulness. It's awful. That's why I'm here - "

"Charming television program this is, Gopher. Though their portrayal of reapers is staggeringly off."

Gopher didn't have saliva to swallow, so instead he chose to unblinkingly stare at his Master sitting comfortably next to that very alive mortal girl, "H-how so my liege?"

"To save you agonising suspense of watching the show and figuring it out yourself, these mortals are under the impression the dead can't die. Well, what is death if not a series of prolonged nothingness. An endless torment of darkness spent in liquid tar of memories."

Gopher didn't understand anything his master said apart from that not-so-thinly-veiled threat to his continued deathly existence. "Right so!"

Harry's gleaming green eyes burned as bright as coal.

"-Your dreadfulness!" Gopher fretted.

"Rightly so," Harry grinned, all teeth. "Now," elongated fingers knitted together over a crossed knee, "what is to be the bother of the night?"

So then Gopher went on to explain they were outgunned by the totality of 'miracles' coming through on the hour.

That night, and nights soon to come, the world saw Death draw his sword.

.

Waking up to find Harry not floating about, humming one of his strange tunes or poking through his stuff wasn't unusual. Light could typically find the God downstairs watching tv with his sister or examining his mother's cooking techniques if it were the case.

Today proved to be an exception, because for the first time in a week, his morning was well and truly scarce of the deceased Deity.

It lasts until he receives a text from his mum after school to pick up some cupcakes Sayu forgot to buy for one of her friend's birthday parties. He was in line in a patisserie, debating whether to get red velvet or classic strawberry cream when Harry appears.

"Isn's it wonderful," he whispers into his ear and Light doesn't flinch. Doesn't feel the warm, oxidised air that comes with breath. Or the presence of another beating heart. There's a cold chasm behind Light, and he turns to face it with all the blandness he could muster.

"Red velvet or strawberry cream?"

"Foul stuff red velvet," Harry said and leaned in confidingly, "you don't want to know what these fae put in it."

"Fae as in Fairies?" Light finds himself mirroring Harry's posture. Side eyeing the nose-pierced teenage girl behind the cash register catering to an elderly man in a fedora. "Really?"

"That's what I heard."

No wonder people found the food here so addictive, Light thought. God damn Fairies were putting weird stuff in the mixture.

"Strawberry cream it is then," and asks, "What's wonderful?"

"That man there in front of us, in the fedora and funny little pinstripe suit, is the last person I would have expected to see around here. Around you," Harry gave a short chortle. "You humans and your fickle, wibbly wobbly, timey wimey timelines. So delicate, so sensitive to even a minuscule, insignificant change. That even as we speak paths are interlocking quicker than anticipated. Round and round they go, where they stop nobody knows," he spins a spindly finger in the air along his sing-song tune, green eyes sparkling and grin perverse.

That sounded as ominous as it could have, and Light was instantly on guard.

The patisserie is a small one, and Light is arrogant enough to bet all his earnings that if he stepped into another patisserie five streets over he would find the architecture there identical to this one. What he was getting at was, the place is so tiny and basic, Light is a direct target for the door.

Harry sensed the tug of fate's strings intertwine like the gentle kiss of a mistress.

The old man turned with a package of strawberry cake just as the door opened for a new customer and smacks Light forward. Harry watches the human catapult away like a captain of a ship watching their prisoner take a swan dive off a plank into shark infested waters.

This was going to be fun.


End file.
